This explorer is going on an expedition to the North Pole in a way that's never been done — by sailboat

Pen Hadow and a small crew are sailing to the North
Pole with two yachts.

Past explorers reached the top of the world on dogsleds
or skis, but now the ice may be thin enough for small boats to
get there.

The team hopes to show the world the strange creatures
that live in the region as a way to encourage people to protect
it.

Picture the North Pole. What does it look like in your mind? Ice
as far as the eye can see?

In the past, that is what the area looked like, even in summer.
The first explorers that tried to reach the Pole traveled by
dogsled in the early 20th century. But the next explorers to
reach that iconic point on the globe may arrive in a sailboat.

The sea ice that covers the top of the world is always shifting —
it gets carried by currents, cracks apart, and freezes again.
There's no land below the ice to anchor it like there is in
Antarctica. But satellite ice measurements suggest that
since July 1979 — the first year such records were kept
— the Arctic has lost an average of 28,000 square miles of ice
each year, or 7.4% of the region per decade. And that loss is
accelerating.

Until recently, overland treks to the North Pole were possible,
though attempts by early adventurers were sometimes foiled when
massive islands of ice split apart and they had to wait for
passages to refreeze. In 2014, a group of polar
explorers skied, floated, and swam their way to the Pole,
towing 317-pound floating sleds.

There are still huge ice floes many kilometers in length, but
there's also a lot of open water and large areas where the ice
has cracked into small islands. Even parts that appear solid may
be nothing but slush.

Hadow became the first person to trek to the Pole solo without
being resupplied in 2003. He plans to set off with his fellow
expeditioners on the boats, called Bagheera and the Snow Dragon
II, within the next few days.

Trying to be the first to reach that same destination in a
sailboat is "bittersweet," Hadow told Business Insider.

"I am torn between the challenge of going further north than
anyone has in a sailboat before and genuinely hoping that it is
not yet possible," he said. "It's a very strange situation — I'm
conflicted."

"The whole method of travel would have to change"

Of the 850 hours Hadow spent on his solo journey, he estimates
that between 30 and 50 of them were spent in the water.

"That is when I really started to see that the relatively
continuous frozen surface previous explorers had reported and
experienced was changing, the whole method of travel would have
to change," he said.

On that 2003 mission, Hadow brought an immersion suit that would
allow him to swim across Arctic waters and an inflatable boat to
hold his gear sledge. In September of that year, the month
when sea ice hits its minimum, there was an average of more
than 6 million square kilometers of ice. Last year, the September
average was 4.72 million square kilometers.

For this upcoming trip, called Arctic Mission, Hadow's team
will leave from their current location in Nome, Alaska. Each boat
has two skippers trained in navigating sea ice. The crew also
includes a marine scientist, doctor, journalist, photographer,
and filmmaker.

They expect to travel between three-and-a-half to four thousand
miles over about six weeks. The first half of the voyage will be
relatively ice-free, then they'll hit the sea ice insulating the
Central Arctic Ocean. Because of the time of year, the sun will
shine for 24 hours a day, though the group expects to hit
sleet and snow as they get farther north.

The team plans to coordinate with a group that's monitoring
satellite footage to plot a route through the ice. When they hit
what appears to be solid packs, the boat crews will have to try
to determine whether they've encountered an ice floe or simply
slush, which can look the same from above.

Hadow and his crew have been preparing and monitoring conditions
in the region for two years and expect a particularly low volume
of ice this year, making this a good time to try the voyage. The
sea ice maximum this winter
was a record low. The record low for the ice minimum was set
in September 2012, and though this year's level may not hit that
mark, it's
tracking close so far.

"We just want to show people by taking a small sailing boat
through there just how much there has been a physical state
change from a solid surface to a liquid," Hadow said.

The
Bagheera making its way through polar waters filled with sea
ice.Erik de Jong

"It's open season"

Most people's knowledge of arctic wildlife doesn't extend past
the polar bears that trudge across the ice hunting for seals. But
Hadow and crew are hoping to document the extraordinary creatures
that exist beneath the water.

That includes narwhals — mammals that weigh hundreds of pounds
and have unicorn-like tusks that can protrude 9 feet from their
heads — and Greenland sharks that drift blind thousands of feet
below the surface. Some of those creatures may have been alive
for 500 years.

There are also tiny organisms that have adapted to solid ice
cover over thousands of years, like bacteria and viruses, as well
as creatures like phytoplankton.

Hadow and his crew want to give the world a closer look at all of
these creatures in order to spur international action to protect
them.

Many arctic creatures are highly vulnerable, and are slow to
develop, mature, and breed because of the freezing dark winters
in the Arctic. Countries that border the Arctic have been trying
to
extend territorial claims in the region so they can fish its
waters, extract resources, and take advantage of newly opened
shipping lanes.

Erik de
Jong

If the waters around the North Pole are open enough to be
traversed by yachts, then "it's open season for commercial
exploitation" as well, Hadow said.

Commercial fishing, for example, could quickly cause wildlife
populations to collapse, since so many species grow so slowly.
Even noise from commercial shipping vessels could be devastating,
since many creatures in the Arctic rely on sound to navigate.

"If someone goes in and starts extracting protein to feed
populations, in a short time they could make such an impact that
[the region] just wouldn't recover for thousands of years," Hadow
said.

Being covered in ice has essentially made the North Pole area a
natural wildlife preserve for thousands of years — an environment
that couldn't be exploited. Without legal protection, however,
the region could start changing even faster as more boats attempt
to travel through the area.

"We want to raise awareness of a situation that is upon us now
and it's about to get worse," Hadow said. "Whether we reach the
Pole itself is ultimately immaterial."